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Remaining above the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) comfort level for the second month in a row, retail inflation rose to an eight-month high of 6.07 per cent in February, mainly on account of a rise in food prices. The RBI has been asked by the government to ensure that the CPI inflation remains at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) based retail inflation was 5.03 per cent in February 2021 and 6.01 per cent in January 2022. The previous high was 6.26 per cent in June 2021.

The National Statistical Office (NSO) under Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in its data has showed that the Rural CPI (General) in February 2022 stood at 6.38 per cent as against 6.12 per cent in January. The Urban CPI (General) stood at 5.75 per cent in February as against 5.91 per cent in January. The index value for Rural, Urban and Combined CPI (General) stood at 166.7, 165.5 and 166.1 respectively, in February 2022.

As per the data released by the NSO, the rate of price rise in the food basket was 5.89 per cent in February, up from 5.43 per in the preceding month. In the food basket, inflation in cereals moved up to 3.95 per cent; meat and fish to 7.45 per cent, while for eggs, the rate of price rise was 4.15 per cent during the month. Among others, vegetables turned dearer with an inflation print of 6.13 per cent, and for spices it rose to 6.09 per cent. In fruits, the inflation remained static at 2.26 per cent when compared to the preceding month. In ‘fuel and light’, inflation softened to 8.73 per cent from 9.32 per cent in January.

The Price data are collected from selected 1114 urban Markets and 1181 villages covering all States/UTs through personal visits by field staff of Field Operations Division of NSO, MoSPI on a weekly roster. During the month of February 2022, NSO collected prices from 99.6% villages and 98.2% urban Markets while the Market-wise prices reported therein were 89.6% for rural and 92.9% for urban.